Sandy Agee of Treasure Island tapes a hole in the drywall in the downstairs bathroom of her home. She says holes can easily be poked in the soft spots on the walls and she would like the city to make repairs.

Sandy Agee of Treasure Island stands in an area outside her upstairs bathroom that became saturated with water after her bathroom flooded a few weeks prior on Friday, April 18, 2014 on Treasure Island in San Francisco, Calif.

A hole in the wall along with a piece of the wall is seen on the floor of Kathryn Lundgren's downstairs bathroom where she has had a problem with mold on Wednesday, April 2, 2014 on Treasure Island in San Francisco, Calif.

Sandy Agee of Treasure Island tapes a hole in the drywall of her downstairs bathroom on Friday, April 18, 2014 on Treasure Island in San Francisco, Calif. Her drywall which became soft after her upstairs bathroom flooded a few weeks prior got punctured when she was testing the softness.

Sandy Agee of Treasure Island tapes a hole in the drywall of her downstairs bathroom on Friday, April 18, 2014 on Treasure Island in San Francisco, Calif. Her drywall which became soft after her upstairs bathroom flooded a few weeks prior got punctured when she was testing the softness.

The people who live and work on Treasure Island aren't only plagued by soil contaminated with radiation and toxic substances: An increasing number of residents and workers are complaining about mold and dampness in buildings on the decades-old Navy base and questioning whether their health is at risk.

Kathryn Lundgren, who says her family is beset with chronic health conditions, has complained for years about mold in both bathrooms of her Treasure Island home, as well as leaks over the kitchen sink. Resident Sandy Agee said she has smelly, soggy carpets and drywall from when her apartment flooded three weeks ago, but so far the property manager has made only cosmetic fixes.

And in March, San Francisco firefighters stationed on Treasure Island were forced to move out of their firehouse and into a nearby training facility because of extensive mold growth at the aging firehouse.

The mold issues are just the latest potential health challenge for residents of this small island in the middle of San Francisco Bay that was a Navy base from 1942 to 1997.

State law requires landlords and employers to clean up mold, which exists nearly everywhere, but is linked to asthma, allergies and other respiratory issues when concentrated in buildings. It's not clear how pervasive mold issues are on Treasure Island - city officials said they do not believe it is widespread. But the city has also been reluctant to spend much money updating the island's half-century old infrastructure since the base is scheduled for redevelopment.

Moved for cleanup

City officials began housing residents, many of them low-income, in former military housing 15 years ago while the Navy's extensive cleanup of the island got under way. The soil under that housing has long been known to be contaminated with PCBs, metals and other toxic substances from when it was used as a trash pit. Starting in 2007, Navy officials also began discovering radioactive contamination near where the nearly 2,000 families reside.

Last month, the Navy announced that it would test all of the homes on Treasure Island for elevated radiation levels in response to increasing public concern.

It's with that backdrop that the mold issues have cropped up. While city officials say they and the property managers and nonprofits that oversee housing on Treasure Island have acted swiftly when they were informed of mold and dampness, residents and firefighters said that hasn't always been the case.

Lundgren said Praise, her 13-year-old daughter, was diagnosed with asthma about a year ago and began struggling to breathe at home during rainy days in December. Lundgren has also had some breathing and congestion problems in recent months, she said, and finally pushed the property manager hired by the city, the John Stewart Co., to pay to have her unit tested for mold. After those tests by a company called PSI came back with low spore counts, she had the apartment retested by another company, Indoor Restore Environmental Services, which found elevated levels of mold spores in several areas of her home.

'Just paint over it'

"I have reported it maybe 30 times or so over the last 10 years," said Lundgren, one of the island's most outspoken residents about health concerns. She has lived there since 2004. "They would come in and paint over, I would complain and they would just paint over it again and tell me it's fixed. Then it would come back again."

Dan Stone, the John Stewart Co. property manager assigned to Treasure Island, referred questions about Lundgren's home to the Treasure Island Development Authority, the city agency that oversees the island. The authority development director Bob Beck said John Stewart Co. is offering to move Lundgren and her family to another unit on the island while it repairs her unit.

"We haven't seen a pervasive (mold) problem. This appears to be an isolated maintenance issue in this unit, but it's certainly something we would continue to track," he said.

Lundgren is still discussing her options with officials from the city and John Stewart Co., and said she is weighing her next step.

Just masks the smell

Agee, who lives in subsidized housing managed by the nonprofit Community Housing Partnership, said Beck also offered to have her home tested for mold, something she said she would like to see happen.

Mostly, however, Agee said she'd just like to see the city or Community Housing Partnership replace her carpet and the drywall in her downstairs bathroom. Maintenance workers from Community Housing Partnership have cleaned the carpet several times, she said, but it just masks the smell for a few days.

"You can see soft spots in the walls, and if you poke it, which I have, your finger will poke through walls," she said.

Similar issues cropped up over the years at Fire Station 48 on Treasure Island, said Ray Chavez, a firefighter who has worked there for nearly a decade.

In 2010, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health cited the fire department for water leaking into the captain's bedroom, the TV room and the cubicles in the upstairs dormitory, as well as water stains and "a strong musty/mold odor" in the station. Cal/OSHA also cited the department for not dealing with "peeling, blistering" lead paint in the station.

Lt. Mindy Talmadge, a Fire Department spokeswoman, said all of those violations were corrected four years ago.

Mold back and worse

But the mold seemed to return and worsen again this year, Chavez said.

"There have been leaks throughout the house, especially in the TV room, where we are at (a lot). It got into carpet, and the smell started to get to us - we started pulling back carpet and could see black mold," he said. "Sometimes in the morning, when we would get up, all of our sinuses were whacked up, we had irritation in our throats - it was pretty common over there."

Talmadge said when firefighters notified the department a few months ago of the mold in the carpet, it was "removed and replaced." When the department was told that the mold was returning, the department had it professionally inspected and tested, she said.

Firefighters removed

"When the results (showing extensive mold problems) came back, the members were moved out within 24 hours," she said.

That was five weeks ago. The firefighters are now temporarily stationed at a building that has historically been used as a Fire Department training facility; they are sleeping in the classrooms. But Chavez said there was also mold that had to be cleaned up in that building and leaks that had to be repaired.

Talmadge said the department has determined that the costs to fix Station 48 are "beyond what would be reasonable," so the department is instead purchasing a modular structure to serve as a temporary fire house until the redevelopment of the island is completed, which could be more than a decade away.

Supervisor Jane Kim, whose district includes Treasure Island, said uncertainty over the redevelopment timeline has been a major issue for people who live and work there. In 1999, when the city began moving residents onto the former Navy base, she said, officials thought they would be constructing new housing by now.

"Treasure Island is saddled with aging housing and barely any infrastructure and a promise that development would have been built by this point," she said. "Everyone is afraid to invest money because ... they don't want to pay for something that will have to be torn down. I think at this point, we just have to invest."

Kim said she plans to meet with firefighters soon to discuss their challenges and is working with the Treasure Island Development Authority on a plan to relocate residents who no longer want to be there.

"We can't expect residents to continue to be so patient," she said. "If people want to leave, they should be able to leave."